Mauka: Might is White

Here's a quick update on the two mauka varieties that Frank van Keirsbilck sent me as cuttings this summer - mauka blanca and mauka roja.

The mauka blanca cuttings rooted straight away and have grown vigorously. The mauka roja took much longer to root. I suspect that this was not necessarily due to inherent differences in vigour, but, perhaps, a result of the differing age and nutritional status of the stems from which the cuttings were taken. Although mauka cuttings usually root very easily, it took a bit of bottom heat and artificial illumination to get the mauka roja going. For a while it just sat and sulked. Now that it's grown roots, though, I'm expecting it to be fine.

Roja is on the left, blanca on the right.

For another look at these varieties, go to the Homegrown Goodness forum, where Frank has uploaded some infinitely better and more informative pictures - they're towards the bottom of the page.

What puzzles me is how to get mauka plants to flower. Frank van Keirsbilck and Jean-Luc Muselle have both managed it, using plants overwintered in greenhouses at different locations in Belgium. All of which is proof that Belgium is so much more than the sum of its stereotypes: beer, chocolate and micturating mannequins. The fact that the flowers appeared in spring may mean that flowering is initiated by increasing daylength. Alternatively, some physiological change caused by stem maturity may be involved. Perhaps our growing season is just too short for the plants to get big enough before winter sets in. Looking at the massive, sprawling stems and dense glossy foliage of my two seedlings makes that seem unlikely. Actually, I'm simply doing the doggy paddle in a sea of unknowing: I have no real idea. Nor, I suspect, does anyone else. So, there's another addition to the list of mysteries to be solved in 2010.

OCAsional Update 3) Blow the Wind Southerly

To the fans of Kathleen Ferrier, the Lancashire lass with the moving contralto voice and sadly curtailed life, my apologies - follow this link for starters.

No, I'm actually referring to the mild airflow that has been caressing these shores of late. In truth, it's more of a south westerly blowing up from the Caribbean, courtesy of the Gulf Stream. After a nip of frost a couple of weeks ago, which left the yacon tops scorched and made me cover the ocas up with fleece, it's been remarkably balmy of late. So, a bit like "Klever Kaff" Ferrier, who hoped that a southerly wind would bring her sailor lover back home, I too am keen to see the winds bring us that blessed grey, drizzly, gusty weather for a little longer. I want to get more oca pods ripe and maybe obtain my first ever outdoor crop of mashua seeds.

You could say it's unseasonably warm, but glancing through the pages of "The Wrong Kind of Snow" will surely convince you to expect the unexpected. Due to a peculiar accident of geography we're jammed below four competing air masses that slug it out in a non-stop free-for-all-fight: there's a helluva heavenly struggle going on up there. Britain is the world capital of weather and here in Cornwall, we're pretty much in the downtown district. Still, at the moment the gods are smiling: the wind and rain comes blasting through, followed by brief intermezzos of sunshine and the oca pods live on to swell for a few extra days. Mustn't grumble.

I've managed to obtain a few seeds from Frank van Keirsbilck's very own Belgian-bred oca, Pink Dragon. So we're now looking at a potential second generation of European varieties, assuming the seeds germinate. I am intending to repatriate them when the harvest is all in so that Frank can repeat his success with Pink Dragon's offspring.

Frank had previously mentioned that Pink Dragon was particularly floriferous. The picture below, which I took recently, seems to support his assertion:

I've plucked a few pods from various oca plants and brought them indoors in the hope that they'll ripen faster. It's mild out there, yes, but not exactly warm. Plus I don't want the pods to be rattled loose or blown open by the next storm that heads this way. I've put them in a small 'vase", with water and I'm hoping they'll ripen.

So I now have a little autumn pod arrangement gracing the table. I picked pods which looked reasonably mature. Due to their penchant for casting themselves into the void at inopportune moments, I've got them safely imprisoned behind bars, or rather glass:

Ocabana isn't a patch on ikebana in terms of composition and I'm not expecting any prizes in any flower shows, but this arrangement has allowed me to study the pods a little more closely at my leisure. I had already noticed that a couple of pods on RX0901 and RX0924 had reared their heads in the last few days before releasing their volleys of seeds. That was outdoors and I caught them in the nick of time. It now seems that this same "if you've got it, flaunt it" tendency may be occurring in other individuals. Since their incarceration, several of the trapped pods have pointed skywards and then hurled their seeds in vain against the glass. Gotcha. You may be able to make out one or two seeds in the above picture. At least you can see some pods beginning to lift their necks, just like an alpaca does before spitting.

If I can find a white sheet and sufficient floor space, I think I'll try a little experiment to see how far the seeds are actually thrown. I suppose I ought to add non-shattering to the list of desirable characteristics to select for. Let's get the harvest home first.

Come on Kumara!

The connection between a convolvulaceous tuber bearing crop, a folk-blues artist and a cetacean may seem somewhat obscure, but let me elaborate. I used to enjoy working my way through my dad's old records; he seemed to think it was all part of the process of a liberal education and was content to let me wear out the stylus in the pursuit of musical enlightenment.

The link is Leadbelly's 1944 recording of "Tell Me Baby", which my dad had on an old LP. In addition to Leadbelly's 12 string guitar, he was accompanied by a funky zither, or more correctly a dolceola, played by one Paul Mason Howard. The song includes the following lines:

"The whale begin to wiggle and Jonah begin to scratch,

The whale throwed Jonah in somebody's sweetpotato patch".

Intrigued by this botanical reference, I duly trotted off to the Oxford Book of Food Plants to learn more about sweetpotatoes, so that I could fully conjure this absurdist image in my youthful mind's eye. Back in the antediluvian days of my childhood, sweetpotatoes were a rarity in the shops in the UK and I certainly hadn't eaten one. Still, at least I now knew what they looked like - both above and below ground.

Sweetpotato availability has improved immeasurably since those days and although I haven't had more sweetpotatoes than you've had hot dinners, I have enjoyed them in numerous hot dinners myself.

The logical next step is, of course, to grow one's own , although they are generally considered a warm weather crop and warm weather is the exception, rather than the rule in the UK. When Ulrike Paradine sent me a picture of her crop in, I think 2003, it was obvious that Radix could ignore the potential of sweetpotatoes no longer. You don't get many of these to the pound missus:

Kumara is the Maori name for them and might possibly be a better one than sweetpotato. I remember Kay Baxter of Koanga Institute in New Zealand showing us her collection of Maori varieties on a particularly wet and windy Northland afternoon. Kay told us that some varieties were particularly favoured as food for the elderly or infirm; others were grown in baskets then moved around by canoe as offerings to various gods. I forget the exact details - rain stopped play.

So this year I decided to have a go at raising a few sweetpotato varieties. 'Tainung 65' is acknowledged to be the best grower in our climate and is available from a number of suppliers. I got mine from Ulrike, who also supplied me with 'Beauregard' another supposedly superior variety, along with a variety she bought in Beta, a German supermarket; Frank van Keirsbilck also chipped in with a donation of a red fleshed variety, whose name is unknown, so I'll just call it Frank's. I didn't manage to get hold of 'Georgia Jet', which is a highly regarded short season variety. Maybe next year. Wandering aimlessly in a local supermarket, I found myself strangely drawn to the stand with the sweetpotatoes. There I found a variety called 'Kumara', with visible sprouts. I couldn't resist giving it a go, remembering, fondly, our encounter with the Maori varieties in Aotearoa. On perusing the packet, I found that they were not from New Zealand as the name suggested, but the USA. A friend gave me a plant she'd got from a friend, no idea what variety it was, but known henceforth as 'Claire's'. Six varieties in total.

As we've had another wet, cool, sunless summer, this might be a good time to sort the men from the boys. To paraphrase Frank Sinatra: "if they can make it here, they can make it anywhere". Due to other commitments, I was also very late in getting them planted out. What better way to test their suitability for our climate? In addition to my as yet unfulfilled desire to grow the high altitude New Guinea sweetpotatoes (are you listening Universe?), I'd also like to try culina (Ipomoea minuta). This is a high altitude Andean species, with pleasant tasting tubers; I'm still hunting for a source. I'm not entirely clear as to whether the evocatively named Huachuca Mountain morning glory (Ipomoea plummerae) from the mountains of South Western USA, is a variety of, or synonym for I. minuta; it too is edible and hardier than the average sweetpotato, Boo Boo. Don't know if it's found in Jellystone Park as well as Arizona.

I'm wholly ignorant of Frank Sinatra's horticultural exploits, if any, but if I may misquote again from Ol' Blue Eyes' canon: now the time has come and so they face the final curtain. I can delay their harvest no longer. If the frost don't get 'em, the rodents will.

Brace yourselves: here are the results:

T65:

Beta:

Kumara:

Claire's

Frank's

Beauregard:

The last can be excluded on the grounds that it arrived as a rooted plant which I hastily thrust into the ground: the impressive looking tuber probably represents two seasons' growth rather than one, which kind of knocks it off its pedestal somewhat.

It seems that our indifferent summer has got the better of the sweetpotatoes this year. They can join the ranks of the heroic failures and also-rans that have punctuated my horticultural career. Had Jonah been thrown into my sweetpotato patch, I don't think he'd have had a particularly soft landing as the vines were a bit thin on the ground; he'd also have been one small meal from starvation. We just didn't have enough warm and sunny weather at the right time. Living in the southwestern extremity of Britain, on a bony finger jabbing defiantly into the Atlantic swell, I can hardly expect any better. Frank and Ulrike tell me they have had more success. Still, I haven't given up - yet.

The Merry Month of Ocatuber

I might be, as my grandmother would have put it, a little previous in declaring October as the official oca lifting season. I'm actually hoping that the frosts will hold off for a good few weeks yet, which will allow the tubers of the ocas, ullucos and mashuas to swell properly. If we do get a killing frost this month, you can scratch the "merry" from this post's title. Now that days are shorter than 12 hours, the oca, mashua and ulluco plants seem to realise that it's time to perk up and face facts: perennate or perish.

After a prolonged period of dry weather, the rain has returned in what we refer to in this household as "mashua weather". This is the kind of drizzly, cool, cloudy weather that encourages lush growth in the mashua patch and provides the slugs and snails with 24/7 buffet opportunities. So the very weather that slaughtered the spuds earlier in the season is now back: it was only a matter of time. Still, the quicksilver droplets on mashua leaves are a partial compensation:

I've just noticed the first signs of flower buds developing on some of the mashua plants.

I can't tell which variety though, as they have all grown together into a dense weed suppressing blanket as shown below, with my size 11 boot and shapely leg to give a bit of scale.

Some are ascending into the yacon plants. This might make for a pretty effect if the chill holds off for long enough and the mashuas flower. If they do, I'll be shutterbugging the results.

One year, with particularly late autumn frosts, I actually got seeds forming on some of the mashuas, but they succumbed when we got a proper cold snap. So near, yet so far.

I've managed to harvest some oca seeds, all in their little envelopes, but I'm doubtful as to whether rather flimsy cellulose packets will survive more than a couple of cycles in the Atlantic front washing machine. You may be able to make out two seeds in the bottom left hand packet labelled 0908.

I'm considering using some grip-seal bags as replacements. Perhaps a bit of extra warmth courtesy of trapped solar radiation might hasten the pods' maturity. Another possibility is that the combination of warmth and moisture could produce parboiled pods like a vegetable version of boil-in-the-bag-chicken. Still, I'm willing to try anything - once - to get the harvest home. It's not a matter of life and death - it's far more important than that.

Since writing the above, I took the opportunity between showers to try out a couple of grip-seal bags as glassine replacements.

Here's what I did:

Come in, I said, I'll give ya, shelter from the storm. Notice those nice red oca pods.

If bagging works for bananas, why not ocas?

OCAsional Update 2) Podzapoppin

A week of high pressure fortuitously coincided with a week's holiday which I spent engaged in some lazy botanising far from the oca pods and the rest of the Radix menagerie. As I suspected, those oca pods, like time and tide, wait for no man. On my return, a quick glance amongst the lush trifoliate foliage revealed the characteristically nondescript appearance of spent oca pods. Just a few, but it hurt. Those accursed pods may go out with a bang, albeit little, but there's precious little evidence to show for it - just tatty little bits of desiccated calyx. This won't do. I'm not spending all those hours exercising my droit de seigneur without the satisfaction of raising the offspring as my own.

So as an interim measure I harvested the pods that I deemed closest to detonation. I'll be damned if I let any more seeds escape me.

As I may have mentioned, oca pods are annoyingly small structures, hanging either singly or in small clusters from a single stalk. I have previously tried making my own little bags out of horticultural fleece for the purpose of catching the seeds before they disperse, but my needlework was so shockingly hamfisted that I gave up.

I have since read a paper describing the use of pergamine envelopes (AKA glassine) to cover the pods and prevent the precious seeds going AWOL. Beloved of philatelists as well as phytologists, they are ideal for storing small quantities of tiny seeds. Somewhere in the makeshift Svalbard vault where I store my genebank (currently a cupboard under the stairs), I recalled secreting a box of said glassine envelopes. A bit of concerted fossicking yielded up that which I was searching for. Excellent. I took a few envelopes out to the plants. To my chagrin, they were a bit too large for the purpose and my first attempts produced an effect somewhat like a tea clipper under full sail. I feared that the poor plants might be bodily uprooted with the next blast from the Atlantic. A few moments of head scratching (half an hour passes very quickly when problem solving) and I decided to cut the bags in half.

This gave me two for the price of one, as the top end, with the sealable flap could be closed to produce a mirror image of the bottom half.

Now, with the aid of my trusty electrician's tape, I was able to fold the bags and hold them in place at the junction of the peduncle and pedicels.

I'm hoping the tape will act like a little roof, preventing the bags filling up with water. I think it might rain all through September.

Tree dressing is curious custom that persists in parts of Britain as well as in numerous locations worldwide. My oca plants now look like a leprechaun or Cornish pisky has been decorating them, or maybe a Buddhist sect has taken up residence. I just hope that the method works like it did for the researchers in Ecuador. I suppose I could always leave a votive offering for the little people............

OCAsional Update 1) To Bee Or Not To Bee

I think I made mention of the clumsy and unsophisticated pollination technique that I have used thus far on my ocas. As promised, I wandered the tractless wastes of the internet in search of enlightenment and inspiration. Well, I think I now understand a little more about the birds and the bees from the standpoint of my oca plants. In fact I have been keeping a tick list of pollinators I've seen on the flowers - no birds, but I have seen bumble bees and hoverflies along with a number of small dipteran equivalents of the twitcher's little brown bird.

My new technique involves what I can only describe as deflowering the maiden buds in the first bloom of youth. As unfortunate as this procedure is, I'm quite gratified by the results. There seem to be a number of pods setting and I can't help feeling that it's me and not the bees who deserves the credit.

Before I outline the whole sordid process, I suppose a few clarifications and caveats are in order.

1) An oca flower's season of youth is short. Flowers open between 9 and 10 in the morning here. Anthesis -that's to say pollen ripening - seems to occur a couple of hours later, around midday or in the early afternoon. The flowers then close up in the late afternoon. This is pretty much the same in many other Oxalis species. If they're not pollinated, then they open again the following day.

2) If it's too cold or dark or wet, they keep schtum - choose a nice sunny or bright day, if you're afforded that luxury. It can be hard to distinguish between a fertile flower and an unripe one when their petals are tightly furled.

3) You need to reconnoitre your plants to identify which plant has which stylar morph. Having ascertained which plants are which, tag or label them.

OK - let's pollinate some flowers.

Here's a short styled flower, which has the stigmas right at the base of the flower, with two whorls of stamens above it.

You also need to find a flower of another type, in this instance a mid-styled one, which has the stigmas in the middle, with stamens both above and below it. Good.

Now gently squeeze the base of the mid-styled flower with one hand so that the petals separate. Then grasp the bottommost petals with your other hand and gently pull. With luck and practice, you'll find that the petals come away.

I leave the top ones on as a bit of a rain guard, but if the whole lot come off, no matter. When I said deflowering, I suppose I meant depetalling. You should now be able to see the stigmas quite clearly and more importantly, gain access to them.

Make a mental note of the flower's position or mark the flower stalk with some coloured string. Wander over to your short styled flower and, repeat the process.

You now have two flowers, with different stylar arrangements and easily accessible stigmas.

The aim is to transfer pollen from one flower to the other. Easy, you say, with tweezers at the ready. Yes, but you need to transfer pollen from the anther which is at the same height as the stigmas in the corresponding flower. Like this:

And then reciprocally like this:

Confused? Let me put it another way. Take pollen from the bottom anthers in the mid-styled flower and put it on the stigmas of the short-styled flower. Take pollen from the anthers above the......

"If a picture paints a thousand words" - Could it be that dear old Telly Savalas was right when he sang those immortal lines? Let's see whether this helps. Here's a diagram:

It shows the possible permutations of what are called "legitimate" pollinations - the ones most likely to produce oodles of viable oca seeds. Illegitimate pollinations (you can work those out) are less likely to give rise to any viable seeds, but may be worth attempting when you're short of correct pollination partners and feeling tired, frustrated and hungry. It happened to me, folks.

So that's what you've got to do to ensure maximum seed set. I've yet to find a brush that's suitable for transferring the tiny quantities of pollen that oca produces, so I just pull off a stamen and rub the anther over the surface of as many of the correct

height stigmas as possible (five in each flower). If I can afford to be profligate, I'll do the same with another stamen. Sometimes I get a bit keen and the anthers haven't quite dehisced when I pick them. I'll give them a bit of a squeeze or stroke them very gently with my fingertip. If I see pollen grains on my finger, I'm satisfied that they're up and running.

I've just had a look at my friend Sarah's oca patch. She's not attempting any cross pollination of her ocas and yet I notice several pods are forming on her plants. I could choose to see this as a total invalidation of my pollination efforts. Actually, I consider this revelation to be encouraging. It means that when the right pollinators occur and the right varieties are grown under suitable conditions, then fertile seed can be produced. My suspicion is that oca pod formation is probably a more common occurrence than has been noted previously. The pods are, in all honesty, charismatically speaking, dull little structures, that might easily fail to impinge on the consciousness of any self-respecting grower. Here are some I found on 0917, which has styles in the mid position, hence the 2 in brackets.

That's oca pods at their most exciting. They fade to a dull yellowish brown and then treacherously flick their seeds out when you least expect it. You have been warned.

If it Wisnae for the Wark o'the Weeders

As I was tucking into a delicious spud-based meal, the other evening, I was thinking about the massive debt we old worldies owe to the agrobiodiversity of the New World.

Avid followers of this blog (if they exist), can't have failed to notice the preponderance of both South and North American roots and tubers featuring in my quixotic search for increased production and underground resilience in our charmingly overcrowded islands.

I seem to remember an old Scottish song titled If It Wisnae For The Wark o' the Weavers. It celebrated the contribution of the weavers to keeping people clothed -

"If it wisnae for the weavers, wa would we do? We wouldna hae clathes made o wool".

Only a brave soul would have tried living in Scotland without their woollen clothes - nae central heating dae ye ken?

Well, if it wisnae for the work of the weeders and breeders who wove the rich cloth of agricultural biodiversity in the Americas we would be without:

Potatoes

Sweetpotatoes

Tomatoes

Runner and French beans

Maize

Squashes

Chillies and sweet peppers

Cassava

Peanuts

That's not an exhaustive list by any means, but I for one feel eternally grateful that I don't have to exist on tough old turnips, mushy peas and gristly field beans, washed down with a little barley gruel as in days of yore.

As terrible as the consequences of the conquest of the Americas were to both the ecology and native peoples, the resulting biological booty has certainly improved our cuisine over here no end. So here's a heartfelt thanks to the untold millions in the western hemisphere whose crop selection, breeding and cultivation efforts have given us such a varied and tasty diet.